


Schroedinger

by Arisusan



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Awkward Conversations, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Moral Ambiguity, friendship post-mortems, take all relationships with a grain of salt, trans warren kepler (referenced obliquely)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arisusan/pseuds/Arisusan
Summary: Michelle Runge gets a letter about her sister with a phone number to call. On the third of one of Hera's birthdays, she finally has time to think about Alana Maxwell. The Dear Listeners use the only tool they have to further their aims. Nothing very much happens. In 2018, everyone finally has time to talk.
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi & Warren Kepler, Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler, Hera & Alana Maxwell, Hera & Daniel Jacobi, Hera/Alana Maxwell, Warren Kepler & Rachel Young
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Schroedinger

**Author's Note:**

> This is unedited. Please let me know if there are any typos, weird sentences, or other things that don't make sense. Hera-Maxwell and Kepler-Jacobi friendships can be read either as romantic or platonic.

_Dear Michelle_ , the letter read. _On behalf of Goddard Futuristics, I offer my greatest condolences, and my apologies for the delay in reaching you._

She'd opened the envelope out of suspicion. There were enough scams these days on the phone or social media that she felt a sort of respect for anyone trying to get money via snail mail.

This…didn't seem to be one.

Michelle examined it a few times by the faint light in the kitchen. The company showed up on google as an R&D-focused tech company, some bullshit about synergy and innovation and a few satellite pictures, and the logo seemed to match. There was a watermark clean through the paper, too, that she hadn't expected. This was some expensive letterhead, she should know. She'd worked a good few secretary—sorry, _admin assistant_ —jobs before they started asking for a degree. She should've followed Jenny into college, maybe. Retail wasn't looking good as she started staring down the numbers "4" and "0."

But when she'd gone through the junk mail from her box, it was near midnight after a closing shift. She was too tired to think about what the letter meant, her back was sore, and she'd been scheduled to start at 8 AM the next day. She put the letter down, open and creased, on the pile of ads in the centre of the kitchen table and slouched off toward the bed quietly, trying to not to wake her roommate.

…

"Please, uh, take a seat, Mr. Lagrange."

"Oh, thank you. Um."

Nathan settled into the chair, projecting an aura of tired eagerness. The man opposite him had his meagre, serif-font resume on the fake wood desktop and wasn't dressed for the occasion. Nathan had chosen the best polo shirt the thrift store had to offer and a too-large pair of chinos that were khaki, a green shade that was tasteful enough. His interviewer, on the other hand, had on a skinny tie and a blue collared shirt that still had his staff nametag pinned to it.

Standards really were sliding. At least this man had a tie on. The Costco rep didn't even bother with that.

The sounds of commerce were filtering in from outside the office as greeters welcomed people into Walmart and people argued back. It wasn't a very well-soundproofed room, made of what looked like cinderblock beneath too many layers of pale blue paint. This chair undoubtedly carried some sort of disease, along with being uncomfortable and low enough to nearly make him kneel. It was either that or put his feet up on the desk which, honestly, was tempting. Nathan Lagrange needed this job, though, so that wasn't an option.

"I had some time to review your resume since you dropped it off," Mr. Michael said. "It looks like you've got some solid experience here, but I have to ask what made you decide to come back to work. It looks like you've got, uh, a gap of about three years here."

He didn't have to ask. As a citizen of the United States, Nathan Lagrange was entitled to his privacy. But Nathan Lagrange, as a meek and downtrodden suburban divorcé, wouldn't know or care particularly. He'd had a life of being ordered around by his younger brother and his ex-wife, so what did he know? He found it was better to just go with the flow.

"No, of course, of course. Um." Nathan paused for thought. "I had some health problems for a while that kept me from doing anything that needed standing, so I took some time off to look for part-time or remote work. Uh, but I didn't have very much luck. I spent some time working on a few art projects of mine, actually. I dabbled in a bit of sculpture in high school, you know, but it wasn't anything I could make a living with. I did get an entry through to the Little Rock gallery—"

"Thank you, Nathan." Mr. Michael nodded sagely, or what he probably thought was sagely, and flipped over the resume for effect. "And your health is better now?"

Another question he shouldn't have asked. "Yes, I've made a full recovery. See, uh, I've got the note here—"

Nathan tried to get the paper out of his back pocket, fumbling it in such an awkward way that the interviewer would feel forced to put him out of his misery.

"It's all right, I was just checking," said Mr. Michael. "Now, it looks like you've had some experience with us before. Could you maybe describe some of your responsibilities?"

They'd hire him. The others had just been to build up a bit of an identity for Nathan Lagrange, hapless jobseeker.

Nathan Lagrange, or Kepler the last time he'd been alive, settled down in the chair and started on the task of getting himself hired.

…

Hera sorted through the massive bank of files she had on Goddard operations, flashing through them when she had some time. It had been a big learning curve, stepping down from station operations, but after three months they finally found a balance. She wasn't bored anymore. That said, sometimes she did wish that she could go back to the terrifying feeling of not having anything to do, because this was taking a lot of…of _space_. Not memory, but there was no other way she could describe it. There was _so_ much.

One name stood out to her in the files sleeting by, so she yanked it out and scanned it in a microsecond. She felt the gentle, but still distracting hum of everything in the background. Audio input from Ei—from Doug's phone, from Minkowski's and Lovelace's and Jacobi's, the visuals from their computers, the security systems around their houses and the industrial storage crate that Lovelace had set up as a temporary workshop, as well as the office space that Jacobi was using as a front.

As soon as she pulled the file, she let the knowledge in it come out of her.

_**Title:** Incident Report - Fatality 2008.05.27_

_**Author:** AMaxwell_

_**Last Modified:** 2011.08.15_

**_Format:_ ** _Microsoft Word Document 2010 (.docx)_

There were a few different types of information she was looking for today. There were…a lot of incident reports. A _lot_ of emails, a few journal articles, notes, audio logs, presentations, a lot of stuff that had data but didn't actually give her meaning.

_**Cause of death (please choose all that apply):** _

_Accident [ ]_

_Assassination [ ]_

_Cleaning [X]_

_Murder [ ]_

_Other [ ]_

_If other, please describe: __

From the records, it looked like Maxwell had been on a team with Jacobi and Kepler for a few years. She had to check all documents authored by the three of them, plus everything by Cutter or Young to make sure she caught all relevant mentions.

_**Method of disposal (please choose all that apply):** _

_Burying [ ]_

_Dismemberment [ ]_

_Dumping [ ]_

_ID removal [ ]_

_Incineration [ ]_

_Lye [X]_

_Sinking [ ]_

_Other [ ]_

_If other, please describe: __

There were a lot of incident reports.

She moved on to the stream of files. Three years ago, she almost became a zombie. Everything just got too much. She was four years old when that happened. Now she was six. She had been in so much pain and even before that she had been wrong. Something wasn't right. That was how Hera existed. It didn't even fade into the background, it just—she just—she—she hurt. All the time. She had so many people depending on her that she just _couldn't_ take care of for months. Years? Years.

It wasn't even over now.

Humans forgot, but for her, it was more that she couldn't access all of her storage at the same time. So she didn't remember what day it was when she woke up in the morning, because she didn't wake up and she couldn't remember any more than she could forget. It just happened that she knew that she crashed a little over 730 days and 9 hours ago and she resumed normal operations 729 days and 2 hours ago, and that Pryce had given her the understanding that 365-day cycles were the largest unit by which humans measured time and that humans repeated time in terms of them. Each year was the same. Every year humans lived their lives in the shadow of everything that came before them and that came before that. They remembered when they were started. These were birthdays, and they were important.

So Hera remembered when she started. Not the first time, but the first time she felt like she was able to deal with the consequences of starting.

Last year was such a mess that there wasn't any time to think about this, because everything else was taking up too much space. There wasn't anything that she could give to it. But now, she had the space. And so she thought about it. Except she couldn't.

_**Status:** Approved._

This was an important day in her life, only, commemorating it would mean commemorating everything about it. People celebrated some days, and they mourned some other days. Everyone celebrated their birthdays. Everyone mourned on different days. Lovelace mourned the day she was sent off to space. Jacobi mourned the day Maxwell died. Minkowski either mourned a lot of days, or didn't mourn at all.

So Hera was going to celebrate the day she finally woke up and felt like she was okay, and that it was all going to end up all right.

Or, she was going to mourn the day she decided to really trust Maxwell.

Maybe if she hadn't fixed her, Hera wouldn't have felt that way when she went inside and started moving her around like a puppet. Maybe if she didn't betray her like that, it would have hurt more when she died. Or maybe if Maxwell just tried to _talk_ to her, then she wouldn't have had to put herself where she didn't belong and Minkowski didn't have to hold her hostage and she didn't have to die, and maybe if that happened even Jacobi didn't have to kill Hilbert. But that didn't matter, because Hilbert hurt her like nobody else did.

But…

It was hard, knowing everything at the same time, because that meant that she knew that Maxwell and Hilbert did the exact same thing to her. The only reason she escaped Maxwell was because she'd learned a lot since Hilbert killed her. And then the only reason she could even stand the pain was because Maxwell fixed her.

 _If_ Maxwell had talked to her. If Maxwell had cared about her. If Maxwell thought she was a person or—or a pet, or a machine, but no, she had to know that Hera was real, but then if she knew how real she was then _why_ _—_

…

Michelle woke up the next morning to the sound of the kettle screaming. It stopped right after, Katie must have taken it off the boil, but she was up now. The light coming in around the edges of her tin-foiled windows meant she wasn't getting back to sleep before her alarm went off anyway. Still. She wasn't about to get _out_ of bed for anything that wasn't a tornado warning.

She waited until she heard the door outside shut, meaning it was safe to slob around. Katie wasn't a bad roommate, but it was better for their relationship if they didn't see too much of each other. They had different ideas about how much to talk in the morning.

Now that the coast was clear, she threw on a gown and made a beeline to the stove. The kettle had just enough water left in it for a cup of instant coffee.

Last night didn't really sink in until she'd already looked for a clean mug, found nothing, cleaned out a new mug, and made lukewarm, gritty coffee. Actually, it hit her right around the time she took the first sip.

_I am sorry to say that new information has come to light about Jennifer Runge's disappearance late last year. As her sister next-of-kin, you are the only person we have notified so far. Should you wish to investigate further or request that this information be shared, Goddard Futuristics is prepared to publish an official report on the failed mission. Further, if you choose not to release this information, Goddard Futuristics will relinquish a hard copy of the report to you and destroy further records of her._

She hadn't thought of Jenny in months. Before the mysterious transfer that landed in her account a few months ago, it had been years. However close they'd been when the were kids, it didn't match up to one vague email every five years or so. The last she'd heard, she was writing copy for some corporate behemoth. Jenny could have been dead, for all she knew.

Then she'd received the notification of disappearance, in a letter just like this one.

She glanced over the letter again. There was a bunch more flowery, formal natter about how a woman she hadn't spoken to this decade was dead. It didn't give any details, though. Whatever suspicions she'd had about Jenny's work, it looked like they were true. There was something here that the company, Goddard whatever, didn't want to put in writing. All they gave her was an address and a phone number. Speaking of scams, she knew enough that this looked like one.

With the early wake-up, there was enough time to fish out the notification of disappearance while she picked the raisins out of her cereal. Yep, same style, same format, same paper. Even the watermark.

Funny. The phone number was different, and there was no address on the first one. The whole thing seemed fishy, so maybe it was just that they needed the time to come up with a story.

It couldn't hurt to call.

She wouldn't go into any weird empty buildings, she wouldn't give anyone any money, but _—_

 _If_ Jenny really was dead, someone had to know.

Michelle picked up the phone and dialled the number, waiting.

_You have reached Goddard Futuristics, the leading firm in stellar research and exploration. To contact a human resources representative, please press 1. To reschedule a job interview, press 2. To inquire about a presentation, press 3. To_ _—_

She clicked "1." After a minute or so of airy piano, someone picked up on the other end. Hey, at least these Goddard people knew their customer service.

"Good morning, this is Goddard Futuristics external HR, how can I help you?"

The clock on the stove told her she had fifteen minutes or so before she had to start packing lunch. Time to see how this rep handled it; he spoke with a rich drawl she wasn't expecting out of a call centre.

"I'm calling about my sister, uh, Jennifer Runge. I got a letter…?"

"Oh, you must be Michelle. Please, let me tell you I am _so_ sorry. If you need anything, our mental health centre can _—_ actually, our disability representative can run you through the resources at your disposal. May I transfer you?"

"Uh, sure."

"Just remember to take care of yourself, honey, okay?"

The good thing about talking on the phone was that you could make as many faces as you wanted. It was better than corporate nothing, but something about this guy's over-the-top manner was already getting on her nerves. Thirteen minutes. The receiver clicked, and there was another short flurry of piano before someone else picked up.

"Hi, this is Nathan Lagrange, disability and claims. Am I talking to Michelle Runge?"

This voice was tighter, higher, more of a twang than a drawl and definitely someone who had a schedule. After so much time in an office, she could tell.

"Yeah. You guys sent me a letter saying you've got some sort of update about Jenny." Michelle took a deep breath. "Is she dead?"

There was a pause before she got an answer. "Ms. Runge, are you sitting at the moment?"

"It's okay, I don't need to."

All the same, she did kick one of the chairs out from the table and take a seat. Absentmindedly, she picked a pen up from the table and started doodling on the letter.

"Then I must offer you my deepest condolences. It has come to our attention that your sister passed away on the job. I take it you received the standard insurance payout when she was recorded as missing?"

"Uh, yeah. That was about sixty, seventy k?"

"Yes, that does sound appropriate. In which case, let me explain the reason for our contacting you. We at Goddard are on the cutting edge of scientific development. This can lead to some sensitive situations."

Maybe it was a good thing she'd sat down. A few black patches were hovering in the edges of the kitchen, like when she stood up too fast after lunch break.

"Okay," she said. "What does that have to do with Jennifer?"

"A lot of what we do is very, very close to breakthrough, which means there is a need for secrecy around these programs. We work hard to push our ideas forward, which means that it is vital to our company that we keep our data secured."

Here was where it was getting weird, but the guy didn't sound like he was wheedling. He was bored. Michelle tapped her fingers nervously on the table.

"I can't disclose the circumstances of your sister's passing by conventional means, but if you are able to meet with one of our staff, we can transfer the report of her death to you. From there, you are free to choose to publish a memorial newsletter, destroy the report," Nathan listed, "Or pursue litigation if you see fit. To our knowledge, her death was an accident, but we seek to be fully transparent with the loved ones of our employees."

"Okay, how can I book a meeting, then? You're sure you can't just, I don't know, use a safety deposit box?" she asked.

"I'm afraid that would be in breach of your sister's contract. However, I would be pleased to meet with you at our offices, for a discussion, or at a public location of your choosing in downtown Columbus. I know some family members prefer a more relaxed environment," said Nathan evenly.

Michelle breathed a sigh of relief, tilting the receiver away from her head as she did.

"Look," she said, "I need to get to work, but do you have any openings this week?"

"My schedule is flexible."

"All right, then I'll make the trip on Friday. How does 1 PM at the corner of Spring and West sound?" she asked.

"I'll be there with the file," Nathan confirmed. "Since it's not a secure location, I won't be able to discuss the full findings of the report with you, but I can at least give you a bit of context to go with the document."

"Yeah, got it." She wasn't buying anything just yet. "See you then."

"Thank you for contacting us, Ms. Runge. I'm sorry for your loss."

Michelle hung up before he'd even finished the sentence, putting the phone back on its cradle. Now she'd have to haul off and restock shelves for eight hours, trying to figure out what could be happening, or why her sister was such a secret.

Funny. For a minute there, the guy on the other end almost sounded sincere. Nathan Lagrange. Huh.

…

Kepler didn't get drunk, and he certainly didn't get hung over. Oh, young Neil Cauchy partied in his day, but Warren Kepler always had a job to do and that job was always more important than his personal pleasure. Though, sometimes he rather had fun in the execution of his job.

That said, Kepler felt hungover when he woke up.

There was the dryness of the mouth and eyeballs, the sensitivity to the red light coming through his eyes and groaning metal around him, and everything else one might expect after a long night's clubbing. What threw him was that there was no alcohol and vomit that he could taste coming off the back of his throat. If he was in possession of his faculties, and Warren Kepler was _always_ on top of his faculties, the last thing he remembered was having a drink of whiskey.

Shortly before an airlock off the _USS Hephaestus_ opened, shrivelling his lungs before he had the chance to even freeze to death.

Ah. This was turning out to be quite the adventure.

Warren Kepler cracked an eye open. The blue glow of Wolf 359 was just fading back into red now, shining through a porthole and leaving a patch of light on the opposite wall of this, the command room. The lights overhead flickered occasionally, but showed him a repaired _Hephaestus_.

Moving slowly, he dragged himself to his feet. This body didn't seem to be as sore as it should have been, though it wasn't functioning optimally. Dehydration, most likely.

The noises the station made weren't a comforting thing to hear. Kepler could practically feel the seconds oozing by like old milk as he surveyed the room. The room had clearly been through a lot, but there had to be a working life support system and a solid exterior seal if he was able to breathe here.

So. He was alive. What that meant was that the mind doing the thinking was an advanced alien copy of Neil Cauchy, created for God-knew-what purpose out of the only material available that hadn't proved hostile. It was a liability to Earth, though not so much as might have been originally thought. After all, there were probably more of these things out there than just "Bob." It was their newest attempt to capture the unfathomable technology of…music. Nineteenth century European romantic music, specifically, thought that was more to do with Commander Zhang's tastes than anything else.

Here was a philosophical question that might have fascinated him ten years ago. How much of this new being was Neil Cauchy? For that matter, how much of it was Warren Kepler?

At the moment, it came a distant twelfth after ship-related concerns. Most of the instruments he'd checked so far seemed operational, if not wholly accurate. The ship was damaged. Earth was a viable destination with the fuel and food reserves on board, though any flares or collisions might spell the end. Three showed anomalous readings, likely damaged when Eiffel crashed the damn Sol into the ship. Still, from the looks of it, it was nothing he couldn't repair. He had to hope that the aliens had left some suits and rations intact.

Based on Eiffel's testimony, they had a better understanding of humans now than they had when they first started replicating them. In light of recent events, they also had a vested interest in keeping the population of Earth alive and well. That suited Kepler just fine. If they wanted to send him back to babysit, well, SI-5 had been great work-related experience.

Only, these aliens weren't all-knowing. The station would need a thorough check before he could hope to set off, and even then, the potential problems with a damaged station could kill him halfway. With the Hermes gone, there may not be any other Goddard craft on an intersecting course, and diverting to try and find them would only waste time that he didn't have.

One advantage, though, was that as long as he stayed near the star, he could be revived. If something went wrong during the course of repairs, all he had to do was wait for the next event and wake up.

He found his feet carrying him over to the supply cupboard, where his hands grabbed a water bottle. Damn, it was better than peat scotch at a time like this. He drank deeply.

So. He was an alien clone carrying out the wishes of the late Warren Kepler, he was alone on a space station without a mother program 23 million miles from Earth, and he was slightly less thirsty than he was a moment ago.

He wouldn't be Kepler _—_ at least, he couldn't be an exact copy of the man sometimes named Kepler _—_ if he couldn't make a plan out of this.

As a matter of fact…

"Exact copy" might be misleading. Warren had sat though a few medical procedures as a human that would very evidently be missing on this body, but somehow, everything was intact. Either the aliens were too literal in their recreation, or they somehow understood why he had changed. He preferred the first option. There were some things that he liked to keep secret, and some things that by their very nature were meant to be hidden.

What he could do now was go over the station piece by piece to determine its integrity. He'd run what maintenance he could while still orbiting the star, in case of any accidents, and then he'd put himself under and set course for Earth. The autopilot had clicked into gear the moment the mother, what'shername, Hera, left for the Sol. It would keep him safe as much as it could, with none of the passive aggression the AI had had so much of and failed to effectively deploy.

The real problem would be the touchdown. If Lovelace and Daniel made it back to Earth in one piece, they would be cutting up Goddard and selling it for scrap. He could only hope they made good money off of it. But, with so many space projects in place, it would take a long time to wind down. They'd be getting ships in for at least another year, maybe more.

From the instrumentation, it was less than a week since Kepler died.

Well, he'd have to hope that they would fish the _Hephaestus'_ ejection pod out of the water. He couldn't be sure what would happen. Lovelace, most definitely, would want to keep him around. There was a woman who knew what she was doing. Minkowski and Eiffel wouldn't have the heart to kill him if he surrendered.

If Daniel happened to be on shift, well, then, maybe he'd be able to squeak out an apology before he died again.

But there was no question that he needed to go back. There'd been…time. To think. And a lot to think about, in the last few weeks.

Kepler had put together a new to-do list. It was long. And stopping the eradication of humanity was just the first item. It was time to get cracking.

…

_**Title:** Mission Log - Urania 2016.05.12 CHECK LATER  
_

_**Author:** AMaxwell_

_**Last Modified:** 2016.12.03_

**_Format:_ ** _MP3 Audio File (.mp3)_

"Alana Maxwell, checking in for, uh, some general notes. Hopefully Kepler won't be listening to these, because if he does I am _not_ prepared to sit through another spiel about Demeter. Actually _—_ Colonel, if you are listening, yes I know that Pryce isn't perfect, yes I know that we can't afford to have a malfunctioning station for this mission, yes I know that you're supposed to be making the calls. But, I really, really, really think that I have more experience here than you. So, how about you just let me go in and do my thing, like I always do, okay?

"Anyway. Start of notes. _[clap]_. Pacification is going as planned, some resistance encountered, but it doesn't look like they're in any shape to fight. Lovelace is going to try to work against us, but she'll need access to our systems and I'll be keeping an eye on her. So far, it looks like Hera's going to be the biggest unknown. I've made significant progress with her organization, but the station sensors have records of some major anomalies going back before Selberg, Hilbert, whatever his name is did his work. _[sigh]_ He couldn't have just used the emergency override, no, he had to try and take her apart. You'd think we could afford to train our staff in basic skills, but, no, apparently not! Colonel, if you're eavesdropping, maybe think about sending that up the chain. It's just _—_ she's so bright, it's hard to see her get caught up in everyone else's mistakes. She shouldn't have had to deal with any of this.

"I think I've earned Hera's trust with the repairs so far, but I'll keep monitoring her. If things get bad, I might need to go into her to create an emergency shutdown trigger in case she tries to do anything. Eiffel has some kind of a rapport with her that could turn her against us, and that's beside the fact that she's got a record of independent _—[clank] Jacobi, I'm trying to record a log, thank you!_ _—_ thought. Uh, I should look into whether Pryce put any controls on her. Also, check whether she likes Eiffel more than me. If she spent a lot of time with him, there's a chance of imprinting. I'm confident I can take over if she doesn't want to cooperate.

"But, if she wants to work with us, having a fully independent, experienced AI will be _really_ useful in case something goes wrong with the, uh, contact event. I need to spend some more time talking to her. Plus, it'll be nice to have another girl! I'll need to learn some more about how things were going before Hilbert chickened out, since she seems to really remember that as a good time. Hopefully it'll be all right, now that I'm here.

"In terms of repairs, I think I can move on to the sensor interface, now that I've got the main systems under control…"

It was getting harder to concentrate. Hera was just managing to stay on top of her usual maintenance and Lovelace's commands. The rest of her, way more space than she should have needed just to search, was getting more and more scattered as she tried to process everything. _Why_ had she even tried this? What was the point? Maxwell was dead, that was that, it didn't matter!

Oh. Wait, that was why. Maxwell was dead, so the only way she could figure her out was by looking through all her records. It was _—_ god, why was she even doing this to herself? What was the point? Everything she saw said that Maxwell was _—_ was cold, and controlled, she was smart but she didn't have any conscience and she didn't understand the way she hurt people. What could she possibly find in there?

Logs weren't everything, Hera knew. She carried and she read the logs that the _Hephaestus_ crew put together, and they meant nothing compared to what she experienced. It should be the same for everything like that, right?

The problem wasn't that she wanted to know Maxwell. She wanted to know the person that Maxwell had been to her. Kind. Gentle. She remembered the feeling of her rooting around her brain and even when she overrode her, it was…so…gentle…

She'd never been happier than the day she woke up again and everything was all right. Maxwell made everything all right. She'd taken her apart and put her back together, better, and she never had to, she was never asked to, she admitted that it was a risk to do it, and she did. She didn't even know her, and she'd given her so much of her own time and love it was impossible not to feel…just to _feel_. Loved.

That's what it was.

Whatever love was, her memories of Maxwell felt like it. The reason she was looking so hard was that she didn't want it to be a mistake. She wanted to mourn and feel the love flow in and out of her like waves, like the ocean that she'd seen bowl over ships in training, so that maybe it would wash the pain away or at least replace it with something better.

She wanted it so hard, she didn't think she could bear to lose it. Fool me once, shame on Hilbert, fool me twice, shame on me. If it turned out Maxwell was just using her _—_ was always just _using_ her _—knew how much she meant and used her_ _—_

"All right, Hera. What do you want."

All the space inside her that was thinking about Maxwell stopped. She looked around for where she'd heard it, and found Jacobi staring into his webcam with red eyes, one of them twitching. Nothing out of the ordinary, except usually he had it covered up with a sticky note.

"J-Jacobi?"

…

Michelle should've asked for a description. She was kicking herself as she watched identical besuited businessmen walk past this way and that along sidewalks that took up too much of the greenspace, checking her phone at increasing intervals until it took three glances at the screen for a single minute to pass.

Her pulse was shimmying up and down, fanning up some kind of anxiety that she couldn't really place. They said that you could feel the effects of whatever kind of reaction you were having sometimes before you knew what it was. Already, she was sure her face was turning pale. It didn't make any sense. The only reason she remembered what Jenny looked like was because their parents couldn't fit all the photo albums when they moved into a home.

At least it wasn't too cold. The grass wasn't fully green, though it probably didn't get green even in the height of summer. There was too much pollution and too many apartment dogs around the place. It wasn't the worst place to be standing, awkwardly, in your windbreaker, shifting weight from foot to foot as your backpack straps suddenly got so much tighter than they were when you put it on.

The cloud cover today gave everything a weird sort of cast. She wouldn't have noticed if she weren't waiting so long, but there were no actual shadows. It was still bright out, the clouds were thin and higher than would give any rain, which made it even more disconcerting. It was like standing in a computer game. No sun, no shadows, no actual people, no one talking, just rushing back to the office.

She'd just let her eyes wander out to the street, counting red cars, when one of them peeled off from the thin stream. The only reason she noticed was that he didn't walk right, either. There was too much of him. When he took a step, the process started in the hips and worked its way slowly out to the ankle, but by the time that happened it was already time to take another step. He walked sort of like a…marionette? Whatever Pinocchio was. And he was approaching.

The man extended a hand to her from somewhere above her, the arm taking its time to unfold. His right hand, poking out from a too-short sleeve, carried a briefcase.

"Hi, would you be Ms. Runge?" The man asked. "I'm Nathan, I believe we talked the other day."

"Uh, yeah. Nice of you to show up," she said, offering her own hand in return. Wait, wrong hand. This guy was a lefty.

"Oh I'm so sorry," said Nathan cheerfully, shaking quickly. "I must be too used to staying in the office. My parents didn't try to beat it out of me, you know, and actually my mother was born left-handed too, but she was one generation too early. Poor thing never quite got over it, she still writes with her right and she played golf with her left. It's odd, don't you think, the way people get hung up over that sort of thing? Oh, but where are my manners, you probably want to sit down. How about that bench over here?"

Nathan turned with his whole body, gesturing to a bench further into the park.

Michelle didn't know what to do with the onslaught of whatever the hell this guy was on, so she just nodded. "Sure, that works."

"It's just better to be out of the way, you see," Nathan yammered on, "Can't be too careful these days. And I'm sure you'd rather hear everything first, of course."

She had to half-run to keep up with him as he strode disjointedly across the grass, ignoring the notices that asked visitors to please use the pathway. The suit was definitely too small, not the right colour, either. It probably was navy, once, but it was a sort of uneven grey that made Nathan look more washed-out than he already did, with a faded tan and greying hair. The man looked like he'd been through the washing machine one too many times, which also explained how he looked…stretched.

"You'll have to fill me in on some things," she said. "If I'm being honest, I'm surprised Jennifer put me as her contact. We weren't close."

"I'm afraid I can't comment on the status of your relationship, but I can most certainly give you a few details on what your sister was working on at Goddard."

Nathan folded up neatly on the bench when they got there, clutching the briefcase on his lap as he gestured for her to sit at the other end. She did. Her legs were getting tired, after all.

"Okay, then let's, uh, start from the beginning."

It was odd, the way Nathan smiled at her, but he was a weird kind of guy. Not creepy, not yet. He just seemed tired.

"Well, first, you had probably better know that your sister _—_ Jennifer?—worked under an assumed name while she was with us. I am not at liberty to disclose the reason, but some of her work before had made her _persona non grata_ in a few higher circles in America," Nathan said expansively, "Now, I didn't work with her often, oh, except for one time where there was a breach of privacy by a man carrying a live fish, I can tell you the story later, but we had been coworkers for quite a long while. She was known to me as one Rachel Young, only child, parents working in New England, so let me tell you it was a surprise to see you on her emergency directive."

Michelle nodded mutely, letting the words bounce off of her. "How did she die?"

The smile left Nathan's face a few seconds after it was supposed to. He opened the briefcase, handing over a thick bubble-wrapped envelope. She took it. It looked official enough, but she made a note to google how to deal with poisoned packages, or whatever. But then he pulled out another envelope, and some paper from that, and handed over an official-looking copy, stapled together and looking worse for wear.

"I am sorry about the state of the report, but I'm afraid we've had a backlog that has necessitated some…unconventional storage. The details should all be in there, but I can give you the story myself, if you'd prefer."

"Yeah, I think I would."

The nerves were keeping her stiff, sitting straight on the edge of the bench, but Nathan had made himself comfortable. He leaned out against the back of the bench, spreading an arm out along it while the other one was free to talk for him.

"All right then, Ms. Runge. Your sister, Jennifer, my friend Rachel, was a top class manager. Quite good at other things, too, but she was especially good at making decisions in a crisis. For this reason, she was sent to help with some ongoing personnel issues on the space station _Hephaestus_ in 2016—"

"Hold on a minute—" She blurted out. "Are you telling me Jenny was in _space_?"

Nathan almost looked offended, raising his eyebrows all the way up. He straightened up a bit, opening the report to some satellite pictures of what looked like screenshots from _2001_.

"Why, of course. Goddard is on the cutting edge of technological research and development, which means we sometimes need to test our equipment under…unusual circumstances. What I mean to say is, we dispatched Director Young to resolve some questions aboard the _Hephaestus_ before the team there was scheduled to observe a solar event around the star Wolf 359. Unfortunately, one of the staff there was undergoing a mental health crisis that hadn't been correctly identified."

"So no rogue AIs?" Michelle asked, mouth dry.

"He attempted to hold the team onboard hostage and force a return to Earth under the dangerous conditions of a solar flare. We don't have a clear picture of what happened, but it seems that there was a struggle in which he and your sister was both killed. The reason it took so long to determine her death was that the data the _Hephaestus_ crew collected was corrupted by the ensuing emergency shutdown. It took some time for the station to transmit to Earth, time for the station to return to Earth and for the crew to give their version of the events, and more time to clean the relevant data enough to put together a timeline. We wanted to be certain before we gave you the news, you see."

Shaking his head sadly, Nathan closed the report again and put it down on the bench in front of her.

"I do," she said.

"It's tragic, I know. I often think, what would have happened if anyone else were sent out? Ms. Young—sorry, Jennifer—only tried to keep the mission on track, you see, she took the initiative and, because of her, we got some information on atomic translation that we maybe wouldn't get for another decade, but sometimes I think it would have been better if they just let Warren have his way. The both of them…it was a loss. Oh, but I'm sorry to be going on like this. I included our life insurance package in the envelope, there, so you can have a read over that when you get home. There are some services if you need grief counselling, or anything of the sort. Goddard is aware that some of our activities can be risky, so we don't like to leave anyone alone."

This was going to take a lot of time to sink in, Michelle thought. It wasn't real. Today wasn't real. Her sister was an astronaut and she died in a high-stakes struggle on a space station. That had to be made up. They hadn't even bothered to make the man telling her look real, or the clouds.

"Ms. Runge?"

Nathan was looking at her with something approaching compassion.

"Oh, uh, I think I'll be okay," she murmured. "We weren't that close. I don't think I even talked to her, for…anyway, it's fine. Thank you for telling me."

There wasn't anything else to talk about and his eyes—colourless, grey—were getting to her, so she opened her backpack and started packing the envelopes away, bending them to fit around her lunch kit.

"I really am sorry, Ms. Runge." There was a hint of a waver of a crack in Nathan's voice.

"Yeah? Me too."

Michelle stood up, thanked him quickly, and walked away. There was a second handshake in there somewhere and more words, nothing that meant anything.

She wondered. Why Jenny was making more money than God at a tech firm and she had to work for minimum wage, why she'd never heard of any civilian space missions, why Nathan looked so sad. They couldn't have been involved, eugh, not like that. Who knew.

Should she tell her parents? Jenny disowned them too, even before her. They'd probably like it better if their daughter was an ungrateful bitch than a dead hero. Or, maybe not. Their parents weren't the best, never had been. Maybe that was why they grew up so close.

Michelle tightened her hands around the straps of her backpack. No self-respecting adult in a white collar profession would wear one. She walked down the sidewalk to the bus stop, and she let herself cry. At any rate, the tears worked their way down her face. She couldn't get up the energy to sob. She didn't even feel sad.

There was just a growing feeling that no one else here would ever know her like Jenny.

…

"Uh, what makes you think I _want_ anything?" Hera asked.

Keeping the search running in the background, she shifted her discretionary attention over to Jacobi's office.

"What can I say, I'm a people person," Jacobi said kindly. "You've also been running at one-third speed and my phone screen has been flashing on and off like a strobe light, so either I'm having a stroke, or _something_ is making you come out over here. So. I'm going to talk to you about whatever is happening, and then you're going to let me do my work. What do you want."

Darn her subconscious. A human-like brain couldn't handle everything that a space station threw at it, so of _course_ she'd been designed to passively seek solutions. She just wished that Jacobi wasn't the most obvious solution to her problem. It wasn't like she hated him, any more, but talking with him was like using piracy sites blindfolded. Sooner or later, you were going to click on a virus.

"I…want…to…talk to you! Just checking in on my favourite science officer! Status looks normal, so I can just speed up your processing and get back to work, all right?"

"Okay, Hera, feel free to keep setting my ringtone off at random. It's not like the soundproofing in here is bad, or anything."

Jacobi rolled his eyes, facing the webcam dead-on.

"Fine! Okay, fine, I don't actually want to talk to you, but—you know Maxwell. Knew. But I don't mean it like that, it's just, you were close, right? So you probably knew her."

"Yeah? And?"

Ugh, god, he was really just trying to drag it out of her. Why did he have to do that? Wasn't it enough to just go along with things and not be passive aggressively resistant to everything?

"You knew her better than I did? So, tell me what she was like."

She watched Jacobi spin around in his chair instead of answering her. The little—

"Yeah, uh, why?"

"Because I want to know. I want to know more about Maxwell, so I'm asking you."

"No, seriously, why? Why now, actually? She's been dead for, like, two years."

"More than two."

Jacobi leaned forward on his desk, staring her in the eye again.

"Then what's the point? Whatever happened between you two happened," he said, waving his hands around vaguely, "But it doesn't matter anymore, because she's dead, and you only knew her for what, a couple of months? There's no point in thinking about it. What happened, happened. Look at her personnel file if you really want to."

"I already did! I went through _all_ of her files, _all_ of her health assessments, the incident reports, the notes, the language logs, I looked at her hiring profile, I listened to the SI-5 audio logs—"

"Waitwaitwait, all of them?" he asked.

"Well, not yet, but I got all the way to 2010 today." Something passed over Jacobi's face that she recognized as not-a-good-look. "But that doesn't matter. You said you'd tell me what I wanted, and then we could both go back to work. Tell me about Maxwell."

She felt programs closing as Jacobi clicked around his laptop, saving and shutting down some files. There was a rumble from outside the office as she saw the startup next door took in a delivery of binders through the security camera.

"Okay." Jacobi sighed. "Doctor Alana Maxwell was born in Idaho or somewhere else in 1988, probably. She pursued a Bachelor's in computer science—ow!"

There was a certain satisfaction to stinging him with a little crackle of static, even now. He must have known, because he glared at her through the camera.

"You know that's not what I want. Tell me what she was like as a person."

"Sure, I guess. Alana was great. She as smart, she was nice, she was a really good friend, she always thought about things that no one else dreamed of and she was prepared for anything."

Ugh, she almost expected better from Jacobi, but his voice went all wistful there, and she knew he wasn't thinking about this the right way.

"But if she was nice, why did she kill so many people? I have at least 14 fatality incident reports attributed to either Alana Maxwell or SI-5, Jacobi. Come on."

Now that actually startled him. His eyebrows bent together like two plotting caterpillars.

"I didn't say she was a good person. I said she was nice."

"And she slapped you. That's not really that nice. Plus, look at what she did to me! She acted all—kind, okay, but she still messed around in my head and tried to get me to help you guys kill Minkowski!"

"And Hilbert," Jacobi muttered.

"Hilbert doesn't count."

Somewhere else, Lovelace was talking over the landing plans for the _USS Deimos_ and she was giving her input. Somewhere elsewhere else, Minkowski was briefing her team of space program employees and one legal representative before a meeting with some of the lawyers hired by the _Hermes_ team's family members. Elsewhere somewhere else, Koudelka's conversation with a particularly stubborn hygienist was filtering through his phone. Somewhere elsewhere somewhere else, Doug was groaning and moaning over his homework.

Right here and now, Jacobi's face screwed up.

"I guess," he said.

"So why was she nice? She hurt you, she hurt me, so why is she nice? How is she 'great'?" she pressed him, trying to get a real answer.

"Look, Alana was genuinely _the_ nicest person that I have ever been friends with. I don't know what that says about me. I spent a lot of time with her, and she really helped me feel better about… _me_. Like, she listened to me complain, she, I don't know, she supported me. Better than my family ever did," he added dryly. "You just said she was kind. That's how she's great. She makes you feel like you're real. Like you're a real, living, person."

Hera pushed back another wave of emotion, trying to stay on task and not let it slow her down any further, or at least not make her glitch out so much Jacobi couldn't hear her.

"Okay, but if I was a person to her, than that makes what she did even worse! I know she was just trying to manipulate me so you could use me, and then when she couldn't trick me, she got inside me and made me…not-me. That's horrible. At least when you were going to lobotomize me, you didn't think I was a person."

"That's not true," Jacobi said sullenly.

"Oh? Did you _forget_ the part where she took over me and ordered me to give you guys Minkowski?"

"No, I mean that's not true."

"You—"

Jacobi held up his hands defensively, shaking his head.

"Hey! Hey, I'm not saying she didn't do that, I'm just saying that I don't think she was trying to trick you. She talked about you a lot. Kepler was in favour of replacing you as soon as he checked you guys' logs, but she talked him out of it. She got really worked up over it, too."

"Did…she?"

"I—okay, I'm not an AI, so I don't understand a lot of what was going on between you two, but she cared about you. We didn't even talk about the ship's AI before we got there, because we were _there_ for the contact event. So, Alana's dead, and I'll never know what was going on in her head, but she put our mission on the line just to keep you, you know. There."

Hera felt something inside her break, and flow, and it must have come out because all of a sudden Jacobi's eyes went wide as saucers.

"Hera? What's going on?"

"I d-don't know how she could—if she cared about me, then why did she do all those things to me? _How_ could she j-just take _me_ away and force me to work for you guys if she knew how bad it was? I'd be ok-kay if she never meant anything to me, but she d-did. She meant _so_ much to me, Jacobi, she s-saved me. I think she did m-more for me than anyone else, just b-being there. T-talking to me. She understood. She understood me. She understood what she did to me and-d I wish I could hate her. I wish I could hate her like I h-hated Hilbert, or Pryce, because I hate th-them for what they did! Sh-she gave me everything I wanted and she took it away-y. I c-couldn't even say sorry."

There wasn't any input from that room for a long time. Hera waited to see if there would be. Jacobi was crying. He was doing a good job at hiding it. Mostly, he looked angry.

"If Alana hurt you that bad, then it's okay for you to hate her. You don't owe her anything. She wasn't that great of a person, I guess. It's just that, well, there was no one who was actually better to me."

Laughing was something programmed into her communications array to help her blend in better with humans, but over the years it had become more of a need than a performance, and Hera felt it bubbling up and over now. She started laughing. She kept laughing. And she stopped. Fast.

"I don't hate her! Didn't you listen to what I just said?"

"Yes, I did," Jacobi said slowly. "It's _also_ okay if you don't hate her. What do I know? It's none of my business. And, uh, I know what it can be like. When you care about someone you shouldn't. It kind of sucks, even though it's not like you can control what you're feeling, or anything."

"Um, technically, I can."

Hera felt the feeling again, something heavy pressing down on her that she wanted to just let engulf her. It felt good to talk to someone about this. There was still that nagging feeling though. No one knew what Maxwell thought. No one. She treated Jacobi sort of like she'd treated Hera, doing all the right things and saying all the right things but then behind all of that, there were sometimes flashes of a different person, who did everything different and was distant, like she was the one who came from Wolf 359.

"I guess so."

"Do you think Maxwell really cared about me?"

"Who the hell knows. That's your decision."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

Jacobi shrugged, giving her a smug look. He started shaking his leg absentmindedly against his desk.

"Hera, did someone ever tell you about Schroedinger's cat?"

"Ugh, yes. The act of observation determines the position of a wave-form particle."

"Not like that. I mean that any and all unobserved possible outcomes are equally true until observed."

Where was he going with this? Jacobi wasn't the type of guy to give long, rambling explanations. He just got to the point.

"Fine. The cat is alive and it's dead. I get it."

"Alana Maxwell could have been someone who was just having fun with you while it suited her," said Jacobi carefully. "Or, she could have been someone who was trying to make sure that Kepler never gave the order to install a dummy. Or, she could have been someone who cared about you, but she cared about the mission more, and she thought you would abandon the mission to get your crew home."

"Yeah, and? I checked all her files and there's still no observable proof! She's a like a black box, or something."

A smile flashed across Jacobi's face. It didn't suit him very well, and it just looked kind of weird. Also, it was awkward.

"Exactly. We _can't_ know who she was. I think one thing, maybe you think another. All of those possibilities are equally true because we can't observe her directly."

"Which means…?"

"She's dead! Gone, gonzo, shuffled off this mortal coil, you know, it doesn't matter to her any more. The only person who has anything riding on her legacy is…you. You can choose, Hera. If the only way you can get over her is if you think of her as someone who cared about you and made a few mistakes, fine! Do it. It's your decision. You're not stupid for believing your own feelings. If everything you could think about her is true, then what you want to think about her is true. Get it? I already decided what I want to remember about everyone who died. Your turn now."

"But how am I supposed to do that?"

"Just picture it like this," said Jacobi, setting his hands down on the desk. "Maxwell walks in the door tomorrow. Think about what you'd do. Just what you feel. What you think she should be."

Hera thought about this.

She thought with a lot of herself. It didn't take very long, because she gave over so much space to it. She heard herself apologize to Lovelace for the slowdown.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I've got it."

"You sure?" Jacobi asked.

Something was happening. A man was walking into Jacobi's building. She could see from the shadow on the floor. He'd show up at the first security camera in a few seconds.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

The sigh that came from Jacobi was way too dramatic to be real, since he even collapsed on the desk afterward and had to push himself up. He pushed a hand back through his greasy hair.

"Great," he said, "Because if that was as awkward for you as it was for me, you know we are _not_ having a heart-to-heart again."

Hera laughed. "Trust me, I know."

Something was happening. The man was on the first floor, crossing the eye of the lens. He was heading up to them.

"All right, then back to work for both of us. Uh, you can hang around if you want, even though you're technically always here, I guess," said Jacobi.

"Yeah," Hera said. Her mind wasn't here. "Jacobi, don't open the door."

"What?"

"Someone's coming up here. I don't think we should let them in."

Jacobi was on his feet and out of the sight of the webcam in a moment. She switched to the security camera poised in the corner of the room, watching him fiddle with the gun safe.

"Are they armed? Who is it? Can you see any uniform? Identifying marks? Hera? "

"No, it's…I'm scanning, but I can't read any firearms. Could you leave the safe alone? Just don't answer the door, it's all fine, okay. It's a—looks like a salesperson. Seriously, Jacobi, I was just distracted. All I mean is that we're supposed to be secret. We shouldn't let anyone see you here if we don't know who they are."

"Now, that doesn't sound right. Why would you bother warning me about a pyramid scheme?"

Straining at the edges of her vision, she tried to make out the look on his face as he got closer to the door. There was nothing. Nothing that she expected. She looked down on to him from the camera right above the door as he knocked.

"Hey, you almost fell for the novelty t-shirt one! It's not a big deal," she whispered. "But I don't think you should open it. But don't shoot anyone, because that's going to bring us a lot of unwanted attention."

Jacobi looked at the interior security camera, right up into her eye and gave her a look that was almost as old as he was.

"Schroedinger," he whispered. "Remember? I'll only know if I observe."

He tapped his fingers against what she knew was a kevlar vest underneath his hoodie.

From the vantage point looking down on the door, she saw him open it. Hera watched Jacobi's hand turn white around the door handle. She saw his neck tilt up just a bit as he looked at the man standing back from the doorway. From outside, she saw the back of the man's head and the corner of a folder that he was folding.

The phone in Jacobi's pocket gave her all the audio she needed.

"Sorry to barge in there. I, uh, didn't know how else to prove this wasn't a prank."

There was the rustle of paper as the man outside handed the envelope over to Jacobi, who she saw take it from the inside camera.

"I won't take up any more of your time," Kepler said. "Just wanted to clear a few things up. First, Lovelace already knows I'm here. You can cover that with her. Second, you can read that, burn it, whatever. Uh, it should go up pretty fast, just so you know."

Hera saw Kepler raise a hand to cover the back of his neck. _Jacobi_ , she sent through his phone, _He's not a good person. Please remember that._

"Third, I don't plan to linger here. There's not much I can say except, uh, sorry. You do whatever you want to, Daniel."

Through the outside camera, she watched Kepler bow his head and walk away. She didn't know how to tell him. He'd promised not to contact Jacobi, the last she'd heard, so why…

"Jacobi? Jacobi, I swear I didn't know it was him, I just thought, maybe—"

"It's okay," Jacobi said quietly. "I get it."

He looked at her one last time. She understood. He was holding the envelope.

She watched him take his keys out from his pocket, grab his jacket off of the hook, and lock the door behind him.

And run. She watched from there, just in case, but she didn't give any attention to it. Instead, she pulled out a file she'd been compiling over the day.

_"You're a person."_

_"I'm worried about Hera."_

_"You can do it! You are good enough."_

_"Just give me more time, okay? I can do this."_

_"We can't afford to let her go."_

_"You don't understand, I've seen what she can do!"_

_"Hera's more than that. She's more."_

Hera let it flow over her consciousness like everything she thought the ocean could be, on a white sand beach with a drink with an umbrella in it. Just warmth. It had all happened. It was real. 

"Happy birthday, Maxwell," she said. "I'm glad I got to spend it with you."

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I wanted more closure on the Dear Listeners than we got, so I wondered if there was enough of Kepler left to appropriate and duplicate, or if they'd taken samples of him while they were on the ship and used him because he was their best option to a) return to earth and b) not do something wildly unpredictable.
> 
> 2\. Genuinely, I don't think Kepler was responsible for Maxwell's death. Maxwell's decision to help Hera led to the coup getting that far in the first place, Hera's decision to help Minkowski/Hilbert led to Minkowski capturing Maxwell, Jacobi's poor judgment of Minkowski led to him pushing the hostage situation too far, and Minkowski's weak nerve led to her shooting Maxwell. If Kepler and Minkowski had continued their standoff without Jacobi's intervention, then we could maybe blame it on Kepler (if Minkowski chose to shoot in that situation), but frankly? It's all Jacobi and Minkowski. More than that, I don't think knowing about the failed first contact would change the outcome of the coup. Maxwell would probably be just as devoted to the mission as before, and Jacobi would be as attached to Maxwell as before. Kepler is responsible for murder, attempted murder, being incredibly annoying, being shouty, and being manipulative, but he's not responsible for Jacobi not knowing how hostages work and Minkowski deciding that Maxwell was too dangerous to keep alive. Jacobi's just pissed in Dirty Work because he caused Maxwell's death by accident in the course of the mission and he regrets putting the mission above her, equating Kepler with mission in his head.
> 
> 3\. This is not a story about good Kepler or good Maxwell or good Rachel, this is a story about people doing what they want to. Hera wants to remember Maxwell with love because it feels better than resenting her and remembering the hurt, Michelle wants closure and will believe whatever she wants to in order to get it, Kepler wants to do right by Rachel and also prank her one last time, Kepler has experienced life sans friend and wants to get Jacobi back regardless of the cost (performing an apology whether he means it or not), Jacobi has experienced life sans Kepler and [ending deliberately ambiguous].
> 
> 4\. I don't think Kepler and Jacobi ever got officially involved at any point. They were friends, they enjoyed each other's company, Kepler spent his time playing Jacobi for fun and Jacobi spent his time passive-aggressively sniping and pranking to try to get some sort of proof that Kepler had actual feelings. Specifically, I don't think Kepler would have bothered with such an inefficient management technique. In canon, theirs was an unhealthy friendship of mutual assness complicated by them being in a formal power hierarchy, not domestic abuse, and that's what I'm sticking with.
> 
> 5\. I think Maxwell genuinely considered Hera a friend up until the end. She fucked Hera up something fierce, but she didn't do it because she saw Hera as less than human, she did it because she'd be willing to do anything to anyone if it would take her closer to such a big scientific breakthrough as establishing alien contact.


End file.
